To Sacrifice for Life
by Sombra de Severus
Summary: Severus makes the ultimate sacrifice for the life of Arthur Weasley. But that isn't the end of this man...
1. The Ultimate Sacrifice

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Lucius Malfoy stood over his helpless victim. The wizard had a silencing charm on him, he couldn't say anything. His eyes were taped shut by the eyelashes. The man was ties up, and had no idea what was going on. Severus Snape stood in the back. He wasn't a deatheater anymore, but the deatheaters didn't have to know that. They thought he was still one of them, therefore, he could not stop Lucius as he prepared to torture the wizard for his own sick pleasure. 

"What's the wizards name, Lucius?" Snape said cautiously.

"His name is Arthur Weasley. He's a big-shot up in the ministry."

Snape shifted uncomfortably. Sure, he didn't like Ron Weasley, his soon-to-be fifth year student, but he didn't want to kill his father! The shock of Red hair was mixed with gray, and the man struggled, very frightened. 

"Now, now, Mr. Weasley, don't squirm or this will hurt even more!" Lucius sneered. He pulled out a magnifying glass.

"What are you doing?" Snape said. Lucius had never used a magnifying glass for anything before!

"Well, I decided to make him see how much he wants to tell us things before we start questioning him. If he won't tell us, we'll use the Veritaserum Potion on him, and he'll cry like a baby." Lucius grinned.

He opened the blinds of the window and poised himself over Ron's Dad. The sunlight struck the glass, and it was reduced to a blazing point of light on Mr. Weasley's eyelid. As it began smoking, he began trying to scream and thrashing about wildly. Lucius cursed. He hadn't figured the victim would move around so much.

"This is impossible. He won't sit still!" Lucius complained.

"Well, if someone was trying to burn a hole in your eyelids, you probably would move around too, Lucius." Snape said. He walked over and took the silencing spell off Arthur.

"Go ahead, Lucius. Question him." Snape said, and then added. "Arthur Weasley, you should spill the beans if you don't want to die." He had to act the role, right?

Lucius noticed that Snape was sounding a little scared to hurt the man.

"Severus, are you okay?" Severus jumped. Now Malfoy had done it, he had said his name. Arthur Weasley would think he was a death eater!

"Yes, I'm… uh… just, not feeling well today…"

"Okay, well, let's just get on with this, then." Lucius said, turning back to Mr. Weasley.

They questioned him, but he refused to say anything. Lucius went to get some torture devices out of his bag, but Snape stopped him. "Why don't you go get some Veritaserum while I guard Mr. Weasley." Lucius agreed, and stalked off to find the rare potion.

Snape went to work, quickly un-binding Mr. Weasley. He carefully pulled off the tape over his eyes, and Mr. Weasley yelped as some of his eyelashes were yanked out.

"Quiet!" Snape whispered to Mr. Weasley as Arthur blinked to see where he was. He was in a brightly-lit room with a wooden door on one side and a staircase that went down on the other side. He saw his son's Potions Professor, Severus Snape in front of him, shushing him.

"Professor Snape? Y-You're a deatheater?" he asked, wishing he could call Hogwarts to warn them.

"No! I am not! I haven't been for years now, but they don't know that! It is very dangerous for them to know you have changed sides! I have been reporting information to Dumbledore for some time now! He sends it to the ministry anonymously!"

"Oh." 

Snape sighed and pushed Mr. Weasley out the door. He quickly pulled out a knife and sliced a deep gash on his wrist and let himself bleed all over the floor. He then walked out and left the door open. They were in a large, enclosed yard, but Snape knew a secret entrance out.

He led Mr. Weasley out, but gasped as he was suddenly very dizzy. He leaned against the outside of the wall. He was losing blood fast, and he didn't know any spells to heal himself. 

Mr. Weasley was no healer himself, and he could do nothing to help Severus, but he begged him to keep going or they would both be caught. Severus trudged on, and when they got to the street, Mr. Weasley turned to thank Severus, but Severus couldn't hear him. All he could hear was the blood pounding in his ears and the wheezing of his lungs as he struggled to keep moving with a fatal wound on his arm.

_Why, dear god, why did I cut myself there? Just because it was fast and easy? That's no reason to take my life. Oh, someone help…._

__Mr. Weasley saw that Severus was not responding. His eyes were very dilated and he had a glazed expression on. He was teetering back and forth, until he finally fell. Mr. Weasley rushed to help him up, but Severus was unconscious.

He listened for a heart and heard a tiny wavering heartbeat, and the intake of breath was painfully slow and shallow. 

Arthur knew Snape would die if he didn't do something, quick! He looked around and saw a small house nearby. He rushed over and knocked on the door. A hobbled little witch answered the door, and he grabbed her hand and rushed back to Snape.

"Help Him! Please, miss!" Arthur gasped, he was scared now. This man had saved his life, he couldn't just leave him to die!

The witch bent over, examined the weakening blood flow from his wound, and listened intently to his chest.

"Im sorry, sir." She said. "We're too late…"


	2. The Lumen Orbis

Arthur Weasley gasped and stared at the old witch. "H-He's DEAD?!" he stammered. She nodded slowly and then turned and hobbled back into her house.

Arthur kneeled next to Severus Snape, the teacher who had saved his life only a few moments before. He lay on the ground, his face chalk white. Tiny beads of sweat were forming on his forehead, and his wrist lay exposed on the ground. The flesh was sliced widely, tiny drops of blood adding to the huge smear of red on his arm.

Arthur's face was nearly as white now. He was scared and suddenly forlorn. Had he not been here, had he not owed his life to the man, he would not have cared so much. But he was alive because of Snape, how could he just walk away?

With a firm determination on his face, Arthur gathered up the lifeless body in his arms and apparated home. He placed Snape's dead body on his kitchen table. Looking at the clock, he saw that most of his family was at home.

_Must be in other rooms,_ he thought. He tried to yell for them, but all that came out was a squeak. He cleared his throat and yelled

"Everyone in the kitchen, now!".

He turned his head to a scream. His youngest child and only daughter, Ginny, had walked in. She stared in horror at her teachers body on the table. Soon the others had gathered around, all of them screaming in turn. They stood by the wall in a huddle. The only ones missing were Bill and Charlie, away for work. Ron took one step into the room and his eyes got very wide. He glanced back and forth nervously.

"D-Dad… what the heck is going on?!" He asked. He walked over to his father and looked at his professor, dead on his kitchen table.

"Your teacher saved me." Arthur said. His face was slowly turning back to it's original color. "And to set off the deatheaters he cut himself, so they would think he was attacked, I suppose. But he was bleeding, a… a lot. And now…" Arthur reached over and showed them the ugly gash on Snape's wrist. They gasped in unison, and Ron flushed red. "But… but… but that's SNAPE, dad!" He seemed to be confused and disturbed at what was going on. How could Snape, his supremely evil teacher, save his own father from the deatheaters? It didn't make sense! At least, not to Ron.

"That makes no difference, Ron. He saved me, and now he's dead. I didn't know what to do so I brought him here."

"You thought we would know what to do?" Percy said. His eyes were as wide as dinner plates, or so it seemed. 

"You all knew him. The ministry has a super-secret project going on of ways to bring prematurely killed wizards and witches back to life. It has something to do with personalities."

"Should-shouldn't you ask the ministry about this, Dad?" Fred asked, poking Snape's face gently with his index finger.

"Don't do that, Fred!" Mrs. Weasley yelled, slapping his hand away.

"I agree. Stop that now, Weasley, or I will be sure to give you a detention." 

They all spun around, hearing the familiar cold voice echoing in their kitchen. Seeing nothing, they spun back to look at the body. It was still there, nothing had changed.

"What just happened? I could have sworn I just heard Snape talk!" George yelped, glancing around.

"You did." The voice said again. They turned and saw a glowing orb floating in the doorway. It darted over, hovering over Snape's body.

"Look what's happened! You killed me!" the voice seemed to be emanating from the orb.

"Is that a ghost? It doesn't look anything like the ghosts at school!" Ginny said. She reached out and tried to grab the orb, but her hand went right through it.

"Hey! Stop that, little girl!" the orb, Snape, said, and it landed on the bodies chest, every so often it quivered.

"Are you okay Professor?" Arthur asked tentatively.

"Of course I'm not okay! Do I look okay to you? I'm DEAD for Christ's sake!" Snape shouted!

"Dad, I think you should get Dumbledore!" Ginny said.

Sure enough, in a few hours, Dumbledore was there.


	3. And Again- SNAPE!

"It's called Lumen Orbis." Dumbledore said, his eyebrows furrowing.

"Lumen Orbis? Light circle?" Snape queried, keeping his voice low.

"Yes, it's extremely rare. If a person is killed under certain circumstances, instead of becoming a ghost, which is in actuality just a mirror of the body that holds the soul, or leaving the earth, they become a packed energy sphere of the emotions and thoughts that went through their minds as they were dying." Dumbledore spoke carefully, making sure that all of the people in the room understood him.

"So, I'm my thoughts. That makes sense. Which explains why I can think. Of course, how can I think things that are not my thoughts at the time?" Snape wondered.

"Perhaps I should go into further detail. Your soul is trapped inside those thoughts, which is weighing you down. The thoughts are harnessed to the dead body, as they were your dying thoughts. Your soul is, basically, chained to your corpse. Which is why they are doing studies on putting the soul back in the body. The body will not decompose or become destroyed as long as the soul is harnessed to it." Dumbledore explained.

"So, I'm chained to my dead body? No eternal bliss? No eternal torture? No eternal nothingness? I'm stuck here?" Snape said. His orb quivered a bit.

"Exactly. But perhaps you can still teach. We'll simply prop your body up in your classroom and you can stay there." Dumbledore said, one eyebrow lifting tentatively.

"Well, maybe for a day, they'd think I was sleeping, then I'd pop out and scare them! Hahahahaha!" Snape laughed evilly. 

"That's why Neville's scared of you." Ron said.

"Ron, Hush!" Mrs. Weasley scolded.

Mrs. Weasley folded her arms. "We will deal with this later. For now, put his body in a chair or something. We need to have dinner! And it won't do to try and eat over a dead body, rotting or not! It just won't do."

"Besides, it'd be really creepy. Eating over a dead Snape… sends shivers down my spine!" Fred commented, to get an angry red color from the orb.

"Whoop, watch out Fred, he's mad!" George said, and his eyes widened as his father and Dumbledore picked up the lifeless body and dumped it into a chair in the other room.

Ginny shivered and sat down at the table. Dumbledore and the rest of the Weasley's followed suit, except for Molly. She placed dinner on the table, and put plates around. They ate, careful not to touch the table. Snape's dead body had been lying on it, after all. Snape noticed this.

"I'm not poisonous you know, you won't die if you touch the damn table!" he growled.

"Severus, watch your language around your students." Dumbledore said, half mindedly.

A grumbling sound was heard from the orb. It floated over and hovered ominously over the table, much like Snape standing and towering over his students. It seemed to be staring at the food.

"Why can I still feel my body?" He said suddenly, and half the table jumped at his voice. Ginny glanced into the other room to see the body slumped forward in the chair, the gruesome slash ever present.

"Because you are still attached to it, Severus." Dumbledore said calmly.

Two days passed, and Severus Snape's body was still in the chair. They had grown semi-used to it.

As it was winter holiday, there were only a few days left until they were to return to Hogwarts. Dumbledore took Severus's body back to Hogwarts with him, and deposited his body in his quarters.

Finally the day came that school started again. The Weasley's all knew about Snape, of course, but none of them had the guts to talk about it. They were so shaken up and disturbed that they couldn't talk about it without going pale.

"Ron!" Harry said, as they met at the school. They started talking about what they had done over vacation. Ron… conveniently… left out the parts that involved the death of their teacher.

When the feast began, Harry and Ron looked over to the teachers table, as they always did. "Hey Ron," Harry said, suddenly looking back to him. "Snape's not at dinner. I wonder why?"

"Mm…" Ron said. He didn't feel he could open his mouth without spilling everything.

When dinner was over, and Dumbledore had cleared the plates, they went up to bed. Next morning classes would start, and Ron shuddered to think of Potions class. They wouldn't REALLY prop up his body in class, would they?

Harry noticed that Ron was considerably pale as they walked down the hall to the dungeon for Potions. When they got there, they saw, not Snape, but Dumbledore!

"Professor Dumbledore? Where's Professor Snape?" Harry said.

"All in good time, lad." Dumbledore muttered. Ron looked around the room and saw a blanket covering something in the far corner, that looked like it could be the body. His stomach flipped over and he hoped that it wasn't. Despite how they weren't as afraid of the body after a while, it still made him nervous. It WAS a dead body, after all.

When the bell had rung, Dumbledore walked in front of the desk.

"Over vacation, something awful happened." Dumbledore said, his voice low. Ron gulped. "Professor Snape had a terrible accident while trying to save someone from the deatheaters."

There were murmurs of confusion around the room. The only one who wasn't saying anything was Ron, who was sitting stiff as a board.

"In this accident, your teacher lost his life." Dumbledore said shortly.

The murmuring stopped. The room sat in stunned silence.

"He has made it clear that he wishes to continue teaching. As a Lumen Orbis. I will leave it to him to explain." Dumbledore said, and left. Ron figured Dumbledore must be in good shape to have been going from his office to the dungeon every period.

The orb popped up from behind the desk, and hovered at the height Snape's head would have been. It was eerie to hear him talk without his body.

"Hello class. If anyone makes any regards to this stupid form I am in other than today, you will get a detention. Now, any questions?" he asked. No one moved. "Good. Now, I am a… a lumen orbis? Yes, that's right, I am a lumen orbis. Basically it means that I am a floating, glowing globe instead of a ghost. Got it? I will continue to teach, and don't think I won't give you a detention just because I'm small and glowing now." He said.

Hermione raised her hand tentatively. "Professor? If you are a lumen orbis, doesn't that mean your old body has to be in this room?"

_Leave it to Hermione…_thought Ron.

"So it does, Miss Granger." Professor Snape said. Everyone's head turned to the figure in the back with the blanket over it. They seemed to be very disturbed that his body was there.

"Now, to get on with the lesson." And so he did. He went on with the lesson.

No one was really paying attention, though. They were all looking in the corner at the body on the chair. Ron could tell more than one of them wished the blanket weren't there so they could see his body.

The next day was the same. For months it went on like that. People barely paying attention, they were all staring at the body. Eventually, Snape grew tired of it. One day, when they came in, the body was uncovered and slumped over in the desk chair. Ron did nothing, although many people grew quite white, or even looked very scared.

When the bell rang, Snape landed on his desk directly in front of his body. He had learned to move things in his new form, and he managed to pull back his body's head so that they could see the glazed look he had on his face. His mouth was slightly open, his eyes were wide open, and there were drops of sweat on his forehead. The sweat always came, it never stopped although the body was dead.

The class stared at the frozen-in-time death of their teacher. They were all stunned by it. Snape let the head drop, and hefted the hand onto his desk. The gruesome slash was now in plain sight to all the students. Some gasped, and some cried out, but none moved an inch.

He left the hand there. The body was now slumped over again and his had was hanging off the front of his desk as if in some eternal plea for someone to save him. The students saw Snape in a new light. In his death he had taught them another lesson. No one is what they seem, and you may only tell what they were really like in their weakest moments.

"And now you see." Snape said. "So don't let me catch you staring at it during class anymore!"

They all nodded. He explained the lesson, doing little except for resting in the open hand that was stuck out over his desk. They began to work. Of course, Hermione was done first.

She raised her hand into the air.

"Yes, Miss Granger?" Snape said.

"I.. I was just wondering… why don't you heal your body and go back in?"

The orb turned a light green color in confusion, and said. "What? I can't go back in there, It's dead!"

"No, Professor, haven't you heard? Apparently the Ministry had been doing some sort of project, and they found that Lumen Orbis could be brought back into their body if a certain circumstance happened. Basically, you heal the body. Then, when the soul thinks a certain thought, it's different for everyone, but when they think this one thought, they are sucked back in. At least I think that's how it works. You should really ask Madam Pomfrey."

Snape turned a deep blue color. "Are you sure, Miss Granger?" he growled.

"Yes, I'm sure Professor."

The entire class suddenly erupted in applause. 

Snape seemed to be turning to face the body, and then the door, and then back to the body. He knew HE couldn't carry it all the way up to the infirmary.

"Ron!" he barked. Ron stood up and walked over. "Help me carry this up to the infirmary."

Ron hefted the body over one shoulder and stood there, nearly buckling under the weight of a full grown man on his shoulder. Hermione and Harry's eyes opened wide at the sight of their friend willingly carrying a dead body, much less their least favorite teacher's dead body up the four flights of stairs to the infirmary.

Ron began to walk out of the room at a snails pace as the orb darted around him.

"Hurry up, Ron!" it kept saying, and Ron would walk faster for a few seconds until again he had to slow down.

"C'mon! Why are you walking so slow, Ron?!" The orb said.

"I'm sorry! This is really heavy, I don't think I can carry it by myself.

Snape seemed to sigh. Then he glowed and said. "Fine, then get someone else to help."

Ron walked back into the room and called to Harry to come help him. Harry followed, looking slightly confused. He didn't know about Ron, but HE certainly didn't want to touch their dead teacher.

Nevertheless, Harry took the feet under his arms, and Ron grabbed the shoulders and they carved their way up the stairs. Soon enough they were in the infirmary. Madam Pomfrey had them lay the body down on a clean table. They did so, and were about to go back down to the potions room, when Snape stopped them.

"Hey! Don't go anywhere! I need you two to carry it back down when she's done!"

They frowned and sat down in the chairs against the wall. Every so often they glanced at each other.

With a wave of her wand, Madam Pomfrey had healed the wound. She got out an antiseptic wipe and began cleaning off the arm and hand of the blood that had been there for weeks. 

"Really, Severus, keeping your body in such bad condition, I have half a mind to keep you here until I feel you are competent enough to take care of yourself!" She muttered at the orb which turned a mellow purple in embarrassment. "Sorry…" he murmured.

Ron let a small laugh escape him, before the orb looked over his way and he put on a straight face.

"Severus, I'm going to have to change these clothes of yours, they are filthy! And covered with blood, too!" The orb turned red angrily. 

"Now wait just a minute, if you think I'm going to let you dress me, you've got another thing coming!" He growled.

"Hush, Severus! Stop being a baby! Boys, if you would go down into his chambers and bring up some clean robes?"

Ron grinned and stood up. Harry soon followed suit as Snape was left stuttering in the room.

When they came back, the curtains were drawn and Snape was hovering outside of them.

"Where do you want these robes, Professor?" Ron asked. Snape turned a mellow purple.

"Just toss them over the bar, boys! That's it, thank you!" They grinned and sat down again. Soon the curtains were open again and they saw that Snape's body was there, looking very clean and neat. She seemed to have washed his entire body and combed his hair. The orb turned a deeper purple than usual.

"You could've just changed the robes, you know, you didn't have to wash!"

"Oh, be quiet Severus, I've never seen you so embarrassed in my life!"

"Well, I've never had someone give me a bath before!" He growled, fading into red.

"I'm sure your mother did when you were a child. Now, boys, gather this up and take it back down to the room."

They did as she told them, and soon the cleaned body was in the teacher's chair and Snape was sitting on the desk. The class went back to work and the bell soon rang. 

He had an hour of free time now, as it was lunch time. Seeing as he couldn't eat, he floated down and rested on his body's lap.

"Why did this have to happen? Why couldn't I have just died like a normal person?" He growled softly.

He heard an odd sound outside the door, and when he floated up to look over his desk, He saw the Weasley Twins, Ginny, and Ron standing in his doorway.

"What are you doing here?" He growled.

"We wanted to talk to you." George said, grinning. They all sat down and started telling them how their father wrote, saying there was a big breakthrough and that he was coming down to see Snape about it. Something about the experiments the Ministry had been doing.

"Really? So maybe they can put me back in this damn body?" He said hopefully.

They nodded, and explained a little about how long it would take their father to get down there, and then they left. Snape sat back down in his body's lap.

"Finally!" He murmured happily.

In a week or so, he looked up to see Arthur Weasley in his office. His kids huddled behind him. 

"Severus!" He said, walking up to the desk. "They have found a way to put you back into your body!" He pulled a small container out of his robes. It held a green liquid in it.

"What's that? It looks like slime!" Snape said, turning a sea green color. 

"If we put this in your body's mouth, supposedly it'll suck you back in. The ministry gave me special permission to bring it to you since they have no way to test it. Apparently it is supposed to trigger your soul into thinking the key-thought that will put you back into your body."

Arthur pulled the body's mouth open slightly and dumped th contents into its mouth. 

_I wish I had children of my own…_ Snape suddenly thought.

Suddenly everything went black. When he woke up, he blinked nauseously.

_Wait, blinked?_ He thought. He looked down to see that he had hands, feet, a chest, he was back in his body!

"I'm back! I'm back!" he said, and stood up. Arthur Weasley smiled broadly at him, and without thinking, Snape pulled Arthur to him in a hug.

The twins, Ron, and Ginny stared up at Snape from behind their father, their eyes wide at the sight of Snape hugging their father.

Snape quickly pushed Arthur away and cleared his throat.

"Erm.. I mean, thank you." Snape said, to Arthur.

Arthur winked at him and nodded. "You're welcome."

Ginny walked forward a bit and looked up at Snape. "What was the thought? Supposedly that is very important."

"Erm.. well, I thought… well, never mind." Snape's face turned a pinkish color and nobody asked him again.

School went back to normal, but nobody ever forgot what it was like when Snape was dead.


End file.
